avatarsarehardtothinkof

Enterprise Account Executive

Contributor

Good Citizen

Fire Starter

Most prestigious tech sales companies to work for?

Curious - what do people think is the Crème de la crème of software sales companies to work for?

The type of places that once on your resume suggest to the market that you’re a serious world class seller...

Is it the pre-IPO, evangelical, ‘no boost from brand-name of company’ but find a way to knock down doors and close large enterprise contracts and maybe take some life changing equity with you on the way...

Or perhaps the big brands themselves that can attract the best of the best due to their brand presence, market cap / domination & work perks?

No wrong answers here I’m sure but curious about this communities perceptions as it pertains to software sales.

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Accidental_Sales_Guy

Politicker

Account Executive

I've heard Oracle has a stellar SDR Academy. My private tech company (1000+ employees) has hired a number of ex-Oracle SDRs straight into Emerging AE roles- which speaks to their marketability.

LoneMaverick

Executive

Strategic Account Leader

I did a little over a year of hard time as an AE at Oracle definitely not for me.

Accidental_Sales_Guy

Politicker

Account Executive

@LoneMaverick What uniquely stood out about your experience at Oracle compared to other companies you've worked at?

LoneMaverick

Executive

Strategic Account Leader

There are a number of start-ups that define the trends - typically your Unicorns which is when companies really start getting press.

Right now I think of companies like:
- Docker (a couple years ago)
- GitLab
- Harness
- HashiCorp

These are the types of companies I want on my resume they show you can build something.

There’s the old saying “no one got fired for buying IBM” the major player are established, sellers are account manager or overlays cross selling new (usually acquired) products into an existing customer base. I’m not saying it’s easy it’s just a different game.

ossnaut

Enterprise AE

+1 to this. From my experience, companies in the IT infrastructure and cloud computing space generally tend to be the most lucrative W-2 opportunities for software sellers, so I'd say a mix of established players, disruptors, and rising stars (depending on where you're at in your career) in that space.

Established players - GCP, AWS, Splunk, Red Hat

Disruptors - MongoDB, HashiCorp, Databricks, Snowflake, Datadog

Rising Stars - Lacework, Honeycomb.io

avatarsarehardtothinkof

Contributor

Enterprise Account Executive

Great thoughts - what do people think about the idea of say going from Disruptor, to Rising star on cusp of Disruptor, to established player (so you have a breadth of experience across all) and then deciding which you're best suited for?

Also imagine that perhaps there is some operational excellence/rigour that comes with experience at an established player that you could take back to a disruptor/rising star, especially if you're not going in blind having worked in a more "start up/scale-up" space before?

Trying to decide if there is merit in an established player if you've spent the last few in the other categories, or just stay the course in disruptor/rising star territory.

ossnaut

Enterprise AE

This is my opinion based on 4 years of SaaS experience (which is to say, not that long compared to others on this forum), so take it with a grain of salt, but here's how I think about the differences:

Rising Stars -- Great opportunity to jumpstart your career and move up the ranks quickly. Best opportunity to move out of an SDR role in 6 months instead of 1-2 years, move into an Enterprise AE role in 2 years instead of 4-5 years, etc. The potential downside is that enablement and onboarding usually aren't formalized and/or strong, so a high "figure-shit-out" quotient and finding a strong mentor internally that will augment your learnings is CRITICAL. If you're new to sales, the huge risk is that you don't learn good sales methodology or habits which will hurt you in the long-run and make it really hard to jump to an Established Player in the future. Also, equity is almost always worthless.

Established Players -- Experienced enterprise players with impressive resumes can make a lot of money here if they get a good book of business. Generally better work/life balance and it's really easy to skate by if you're average/slightly below average at selling and at the Corporate/Mid-Market level. The key benefit here is typically stability - very established onboarding and enablement, rules of engagement, more forecastable OTE, etc. The flip side of that is rigidity - very hard to get promoted quickly/at all, most salespeople won't hit accelerators, and as @LoneMaverick pointed out, it'll be hard to say you "built something" in terms of a team, sales process, etc. Virtually impossible to move up from a Corporate AE role into an Enterprise AE role. Folks coming from an Established Players background usually struggle to jump into a Rising Star if they're not willing to re-learn a new sales process. Equity is usually valuable.

Disruptors -- Right down the middle of Rising Stars and Established Players. Can vary in terms of onboarding/enablement (e.g. MongoDB is known to have one of the best sales boot camps in the world) and W2 potential. Promotions are used as motivators but it will typically take 6-7 years to move up from an SDR role until an Enterprise AE role. In general, the rules of the Established Player are true for Disruptors, but exceptions can/will be made if you have a super-strong internal champion (typically a VP-level or higher). Salespeople from Disruptors can make the jump to Rising Stars and Established Players a bit easier than Rising Stars to Established Players (and vice versa) -- usually make the jump to a Rising Star if you're looking to turbo-charge your promotional path and to an Established Player if they're happy with their status/rank and want a better work-life balance. Equity can range from somewhat to extremely valuable depending on the growth trajectory of the company.

avatarsarehardtothinkof

Contributor

Enterprise Account Executive

Great response and love the insight.

What does W2 mean?

Thoughts on going from established player back to disruptor - do we think recruitment/hiring managers will be less impressed because you went the more stable established player route rather than continuing to hustle for your coin at a disruptor?

Or experience at both suggests you can do it all if you want to... especially if you have the results and the narrative to back it up?

ossnaut

Enterprise AE

W-2 is the tax form that you submit to the IRS that reports your annual earnings. So, a lot of salespeople I know refer to how much money they've made as their W-2 :)

I can't speak for recruitment/hiring managers, but having now been involved in the interviewing process for a couple of years, I'd say that jumping down from an established player to a disruptor shouldn't really be a problem. Good hiring managers will be looking at your individual sales performance (the closer you are to the top 10% the better) and backchanneling internal references. And at the end of the day, it's all about the story you tell :)

avatarsarehardtothinkof

Contributor

Enterprise Account Executive

ahh got cha - appreciate the insights!!! Keep crushing!

lilhunter

Good Citizen

independent sales consultant

How is it selling into developers?

I interviewed at a very well known public company that builds software for developers like 10 years ago (yes, I'm old).

At that time they were just starting to build an SDR / Sales function. They described the job as going to dev conferences and hack-a-thons, building trust with devs by talking about nerdy cool stuff from Hackernews and reddit, and then trying to spot potential use cases in things that they were building so that they would try the API.

Just wondering if the industry has evolved at all?

suhdude

Opinionated

Sales Rep

In terms of funding round, number of employees, and years in business - how would you differentiate these 3 categories?

SgtAE

WR Officer

Hey! Gitlab Here, thanks for the vote of confidence :D

GgWP

Fire Starter

Hey how do you like it there? Looking at MM AE

ARRisLife

Politicker

Account Executive

There *will* be debates on both sides of this- but having come from the pre-IPO high growth company that's playing David to the Goliaths in the market, I could care less if you worked at a 'name brand' software company. I've seen my company drop their pants get get some seasoned veterans from the oracles, salesforces, adobes of the world and they've completely flopped. That's not a knock against those companies- I've seen a few that were great as well but the point being that name alone doesn't carry weight. Often times those reps come to the smaller guys and have no idea how to operate in a small org where previously they had support from a hundred people.

Ultimately, I'd say I'm more interested in the experience they gained, did they get scrappy and steal business from a big guy- did they rise the ranks and grow teams ect.

Trinity

WR Officer

BusDev

For me, any profitable tech companies.

CavsIn7

Fire Starter

Senior Account Executive

Great question, something I’m curious about as well.

I’m currently at a “big dog” and have seen shitty reps get hired above their current role at a “rising star” or “disrupter”.

That being said some names you can go anywhere (Google, AWS, Salesforce, Oracle, etc)

I’ve seen numerous folks boomerang back to the Big Dog as well. Whether that be a year or two later, some cases 6 months.

EQSales

Opinionated

VP of Sales

IMO the biggest piece of experience that will lead to opening the most doors at the largest # of SaaS companies with big W2 upside is excelling at a company that runs the John McMahon MEDDICC value selling playbook. the majority of VCs focused on SaaS put incredibly high value on organizations running this playbook. because you have to do some or all of your own PG and the playbook delivers scalable, predictable revenue.

so if you can perform at one of those companies, you can really go almost anywhere

if you want to be in big company, then focus on breaking into a big company and but recognize that most of these early to mid stage pre-ipo companies tend to actually de-value big company experience and focus on smaller company experience because the job requirements are vastly different

fuzzy

Notable Contributor

CMO (Chief Meme Officer)

FAANG. But, for me, it's the startups with a genuinely good product and industry disruptor. My old employer just sold for $300m. Imagine getting .5% equity cash on sale from that. That's what I'm working with now. It's more of a risk, but a bigger reward.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

Eh. The jury is still out on this one.

Stringer

Arsonist

-3

SDR

Here are 12 BIG DAWGS I'VE MADE IT

SalesForce - as far as sales tout
EMC
CISCO
IBM
SAP
PFIZER
Verizon
Oracle
Microsoft
Hewlett Packard
AT&T
General Electric

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avatarsarehardtothinkof

Most prestigious tech sales companies to work for?

21 comment

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